Field of Technology
The present application relates generally to information retrieval systems. More specifically, the present application is directed to an information retrieval system and method to improve retrieval of relevant information.
Brief Description of Related Art
An information retrieval system generally retrieves information from one or more content data stores (databases) in response to a user query. The retrieved information can include, for example, one or more documents or portions thereof, which match the user query. A variety of information can be maintained in the content databases, such as documents, images, or videos, as well as other types of information.
Information retrieval systems can relate to different fields of practice or types of information. For example, there are a number of information retrieval systems that provide retrieval of relevant information in the field of law. These information retrieval systems invariably maintain vast collections of law-related information sources, such as case law, statutes, regulations, legislative bills, both federal and state, as well as other law-related information, across one or more databases of the information retrieval systems.
Typically, a user query can be restricted to one information source, such as the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), or multiple information sources, such as Federal Statues and Regulations. However, the user query is resolved against all documents (e.g., titles, sections, parts, appendices, etc.) of the one or multiple information sources. There is no opportunity to restrict the search to only those documents of the information source(s) that are related to one or more particular topics with which the user query is to be associated, such as “information technology.” Accordingly, such searches are not as useful to the user because they tend to retrieve a multiplicity of documents.
Typically, retrieved information (result) is provided to the user as listing of documents, which can be displayed according to relevancy of the documents with respect to the user query. The listing can have documents from the multiple information sources interspersed in the listing. Accordingly, the relationship of the documents to the relevant information sources or particular topics is not apparent. Moreover, there is limited opportunity to discover additional information sources or topics from such retrieved information.